OROG3NY

On January 15th, 1934 (Maagh 2nd, 1990 in the Nepali calendar) a disastrous earthquake has hit Nepal. Its date was later selected to hold the National Earthquake Safety Day.

This year, Maagh 2 falls on January 16th, and Nepali people celebrate this event for the 22nd time. The Seismology at School in Nepal project participated with two events:

• A newspaper article in Kantipur – see here (in Nepali),
• A coordinated “jump near your seismometer” action in schools participating in the program.

Pictures of the latter event at schools, and observed waveforms and shaking are shown below. Click on the photo for full-size version download, or get the PDF.

The earthquake highlight in Switzerland in 2019 was the swarm in the Wildhorn-Sanetschpass area which started in early November. An often-asked question is whether the swarm is already over. It is not an easy to question to answer, as there is generally some background seismic activity in the area. The figure below shows the located earthquakes near the recent swarm throughout the year 2019 and until today. Based on this, it seems too early to answer whether the swarm has really finished; for that, a longer observation time will be needed.

Late November Iain Stewart was the guest of the ELSTE Earth science MSc program, and gave a great and enlightgening talk on “Natural hazards: how to communicate to save lives“. The full videorecording can be viewed freely online at this page – highly recommended for those interested!

The seismic swarm in the Valais has started over a month ago, on November 5th. Several earthquakes have been felt in about 10 days, then the intensity of the activity decreased. Yet, smaller earthquakes still continue to occur there, as shown on the graph below.

Another graph showing the even longer term trend will be posted here later.

Our paper lead by Cameron Spooner (Potsdam) on a 3D gravity-constrained model of the Alps has been published in Solid Earth today. The publication is openly available, together with the model files.

Updated information and figure on the Wildhorn seismic swarm will appear in this post.

Nov. 19. 17h48: Decreasing activity over the past days; many micro-events detected by the SED down to magnitude -2.

Nov. 15. 16h45: No earthquake in the past 24 hours, but it would be too early to say the swarm stopped.

Nov. 13. 09h48: Another slightly felt event yesterday afternoon; the swarm continues.

Nov. 12. 09h32: A new felt event last night, and further smaller events.

Nov. 11. 09h48, 18:23: Small events, not felt by the population, continue to occur.

Nov. 9. 11h30: The sequence continues, without new felt event since the previous update. See SED situation report here.

Nov. 8. 09h24: The sequence continues, with new felt events last night.

An unusual earthquake swarm is ongoing since Tuesday morning, beneath the south flank of Mount Wildhorn and towards the West to Sanetschpass, in the canton of Valais. It is unusual as more than a dozen of felt events have been recorded so far in just two days, amongst over 150 in total. However, the Gutenberg-Richter b-value of the swarm seems to be a common value.

Below is a time evolution figure of the earthquakes and their magnitudes. The released energy overall is equivalent to a magnitude 3.6 earthquake so far. The swarm cannot be considered to be finished as of now. Updates will follow on the SED website as well as here.

The 14th workshop of the International Lithosphere Program‘s Task Force “Sedimentary Basins” takes place in Hévíz, Hungary, from October 15th to 19th. The conference is dedicated to the memory of Frank Horváth, world famous researcher of the Pannonian Basin, who deceased in 2018. For detailed information, please visit the workshop website.

The University of Pavia and a number of collaborating institutions are hosting an international school on the Structure and Composition of the Lower Continental Crust this week. The agenda and the poster abstract book are online; photos and presented slides may come online later.

Our Tectonophysics paper on the “Source mechanism of a lower crust earthquake beneath the Himalayas and its possible relation to metamorphism” is now online, with a FREELY downloadable version until November 12th HERE.